One of the predictable pronunciations of a single phoneme, chosen by its environment.
In precise terms
A phonetic realisation of a phoneme, in complementary distribution or free variation with its fellows. Allophones do not distinguish words; substituting one for another yields an accent, not a different word. Written between square brackets: [pʰ], [p].
An example
pin [pʰɪn] vs spin [spɪn]
What is going on here
English /p/ is aspirated at the start of a stressed syllable and unaspirated after /s/. English speakers use both every day without noticing, because the difference never distinguishes words in English. In Mandarin and Korean, the same difference does distinguish words.
Why this matters when you are learning a language
Allophonic detail is most of what makes an accent. Producing the right phoneme with the wrong allophone is understandable but immediately foreign — and it is learnable, because the rules are usually short and predictable.
Across languages
What is allophonic in one language is contrastive in another. Aspiration is allophonic in English and phonemic in Mandarin, Korean and Hindi — which is why Hindi's four-way stop contrast is so hard for English speakers.
Related terms
- PhonemeAdvanced — A sound unit that can change one word into another in a given language.
- Minimal pairAdvanced — Two words or signs with different meanings that differ in exactly one sound or sign parameter.
- SyllableAdvanced — A sound unit organised around a central peak, with optional sounds before or after it.
- StressAdvanced — Extra prominence given to one syllable relative to nearby syllables.
- AllomorphAdvanced — One of the different shapes a single morpheme takes depending on its surroundings.
- MarkednessAdvanced — The idea that one member of a grammatical pair is the basic, default one and the other is the special case.
Where to go next
- Pronunciation guides
- The IPA
- Notation systems — How linguists write these distinctions down — the IPA and its relatives.
- Terminology quiz — Test the terms on this page.